Author Archives: bookshelfbattle

Dec 28 2021
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Movies

Movie Review – The Matrix Resurrections (2021)

Jesus Fucking Christ, this movie makes The Room look like Citizen Kane.

BQB here with the horrid poopy stinkfest that is the fourth installment of the Matrix franchise.

Let me begin by saying please support your local movie theater. If you’re (understandably) afraid to take in a show due to Covid concerns, maybe just buy a gift certificate and throw it in a drawer to spend on tickets on that long-awaited day when the rona becomes about as dangerous as a bad case of gas. Or what the heck? Just buy a seat online and don’t go.

I know. I’ll never do such things and you won’t either. Neither of us has the money to waste.

My point is this movie is the type of schlock you get when streaming services reign supreme and theaters go bye bye. As long as they meet their subscriber quota and have enough people paying monthly fees to keep the service going, they don’t give a shit if you actually like the movie. They can make it as dumb or stupid or preachy or lame as they want.

Meanwhile, the latest Spiderman flick is breaking box office records and doing the unthinkable, putting butts in theater seats, the moviegoing masses uncaring they might catch a debilitating illness because apparently the movie is that awesome and therein lies the rub – for a movie to make it at the theater level, it must be good, like, really good…so good that Hollywood suits might put in actual effort.

But I digress.

Way back in 1999, The Matrix was a surprise hit, a new twist on the sci-fi genre about a world where the machines have won a war and turned the defeated humans into batteries, placating their minds with a false simulation. Those smart enough to figure out the world is an illusion gain superhuman like abilities, which they’ll need to fight the system’s evil agents designed to keep free thinkers down.

The underlying message and/or food for thought? Life is a game and if you figure out how to hack it, you can break all the rules and do whatever you want.

I don’t think any of us fans blamed the Wachowskis for making the shitty 2003 back to back sequels. They stunk big time though the second had a few cool moments, the fight scene on the big rig in particular. The then brothers (now sisters because apparently they took their own message about hacking the life game’s code quite literally) had wowed us with a pretty awesome flick so who could begrudge them a 2 sequel cash grab?

But this latest one? It is truly an unmitigated pile of horse manure, covered with pig manure, drenched in pigeon poop, and then like, a dozen syphilitic hobos peed all over it and then the whole thing was left out in the hot sun to rot and fester and grow mold and mushrooms on it and then a bunch of rats and mice and assorted vermin burrowed into it and called it home and that’s before a bunch of drunk frat boys puked all over it.

No, really. It’s that bad.

The plot? It’s a super meta Matrix movie about the other Matrix movies. The main villains are Neal Patrick Harris and the literal Warner Brothers Corporation. (You read that right, as in the studio that gave us Bugs Bunny. No one thought it was funny when WB made itself a central plot point in Space Jam this summer so I don’t know why they thought it would work this go around.)

SPOILERS ABOUND

NPH is an evil psychiatrist who seeks to keep Neo (Keanu Reeves) under control by convincing him none of the stuff from the first three films ever happened and that it was all dreamed up by Neo’s real life identity Thomas Anderson, a video game designer who put elements of his life into a super realistic video game, ranging from his controlling boss (Agent Smith) to the soccer mom he likes to oggle at his favorite coffee shop (Trinity.)

When Warner Brothers, the parent company of Anderson’s gaming company, orders an unnecessary sequel (the studio only gets so many points for making fun of itself), Anderson goes into a deep state of depression over having to return to a bunch of stories he’d grown tired of until a plucky band of cyber warriors led by Bugs (Jessica Henwick in a dual reference to the rabbit that leads Alice down the rabbit hole and WB’s perennial carrot chomping mascot and seriously, whoever it is at WB who thinks it is a good idea to make WB a key part of movie plots needs to be both fired and publicly shamed, preferably at the same time)….

….where was I? Oh, right. They break Neo out of his funk and into a whole new world of data driven conspiracies.

Fan favorite characters Agent Smith and Morpheus return, but in different digital bodies played by Jonathan Groff and Yahya Abdul-Mateen II. They try but they don’t hold a candle to Hugo Weaving and Laurence Fishburne who, I like to think (or hope) they turned down this crap because there wasn’t enough money in the world to make them lower themselves enough to be associated with it.

Meanwhile, Carrie-Ann Moss reprises her iconic role as the leather clad biker babe Trinity and the gang must save her from the life the Matrix has cruelly assigned to her, that of a suburban soccer mom, because apparently, she would be better off getting sucked out of a pod full of goo and forced to live as an underground freedom fighter aboard a stank ass, dank, dark tunnel dwelling ship than, God forbid, raise children and be the important matriarch figure in their lives.

STATUS: To quote John Lovitz’ the Critic, “it stinks.” I watched it so I could tell you that you shouldn’t. To be fair, the final 20 minutes is a fun special effects bonanza, so if you want to put up your HBO MAX app and fast forward to the last 20, I wouldn’t blame you. You certainly shouldn’t sit through the first 40 where very little action happens and NPH and Keanu just pontificate over Mr. Anderson’s depressed state as a video game designer forced to make an undesired sequel. What about us fans who were forced to watch an undesired sequel? Will WB pay our therapy bills?

Oh wait. Now that I think of it, no one forced us to watch it and if we’d stop watching them, the studios would stop making them. Perhaps the system really can be hacked after all.

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Dec 27 2021
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Movies

Movie Review – Don’t Look Up (2022)

Don’t look up, 3.5 readers…then again, maybe you should.

BQB here with a review of Netflix’s big holiday release.

Let’s face it, 3.5 readers. We are all so hopelessly divided that we don’t agree on even the most basic of facts. If I said the sun is yellow, at least 2 out of 3.5 of you would tell me it is orange.

We are also obsessed with social media. It’s tough to get our attention when…hey! A new kitty cat video! Wait…what was I saying?

On top of all that, we have become a what’s happening now society, such that if it isn’t going to affect us within the next 24 hours, then we simply lack the foresight and/or mental bandwith to worry about it. Planning for tomorrow, let alone for the next month, or next year has gone the way of the dodo.

Director Adam McKay and an all-star cast mock these and more terrible aspects of society when astronomers Randall Mindy and Kate Dibiasky identify a comet on a collision course toward earth, destined to cause the end of the world in 6 months. Jennifer Lawrence is her usual snarky self as Kate while Leo goes against type to play a wimpy, worrisome nerd who needs to puke his guts out before he goes on live TV.

Alas, these intrepid scientists find that everyone is too stupid to pull their heads out of their butts long enough to come up with a solution. Mother/son team President and Chief of Staff Orlean (Meryl Streep and Jonah Hill doing their best Donald Trump and Don Jr. impressions are too worried about their own political scandals to worry about the comet.

Randy and Kate are left with no choice but to conduct their own media blitz, quickly discovering that people, by and large, are genuinely stupid and care more about the duo’s looks, physical appearance, their tones of voice, basically anything other than the fact that they’re trying to warn everyone about a freaking incoming killer comet.

Rounding out the film is Mark Rylance’s Peter Isherwell, turning in a performance that can only be described as a cross between Elon Musk and Jordan Peterson. The multibillionaire/owner of the world’s largest cellphone and tech company wants mine the comet rather than destroy it, putting the safety of the world at risk for profit.

Overall, the film serves as a warning against all the things we aren’t looking up at or even just at. We go about our daily lives, wasting our time on social media and we do very little to fend off the very real problems that are headed our way. Will we, as a collective society, ever pull our heads out of our butts long enough to solve the world’s problems before it is too late?

STATUS: Shelf-worthy. My one complaint is this is largely an anti-conservative satire and indeed, Trump has done much worthy of parody, but Biden has been prez for a year and I don’t really see him solving any problems either. There might have been room to lampoon the two-party system or to point out it isn’t enough for Democrats to say they want to save the environment. They actually have to be proactive in achieving goals toward saving it.

Bonus points for Cate Blanchett who is virtually unrecognizable as a stereotypical blonde bombshell cable news babe. With all the phony hair, makeup and the plastic surgery look she was given for the role, I didn’t figure out it was her until halfway through the film.

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Dec 25 2021
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Self Publishing

Merry Christmas, 3.5 Readers

Hey 3.5 readers.

Your old pal, BQB here.

Tis the season for looking back and reflecting and with my overall goal of becoming a super awesome big time fancy writer, I have to take stock of how far I advanced toward that goal.

This year, I published three books:

In January, I put out “The Second Death” about a fame seeking weirdo who seeks long lasting infamy, the kind that survives long after his demise.

In February, I published a collection of six short stories – “BQB’s Twisted Shorts: The Complete First Volume.” Werewolves, superheroes, sabotaged skydivers, wacky conspiracy theorists and more.

And finally, in March I published “The Phone Did It.” This one popped into my head at random and I felt it was inspired. It’s about a salesman with an unusual product, an automated cell phone that knows you so well, it just does whatever you would have done anyway. Ahh, but what if said salesman has demented thoughts that he would have never acted on without a soul-less mobile device willing to do the dirty deeds for him?

Funny, I published three books in the first three months of the year. I hoped I would keep it up and publish one book a month but unfortunately I stalled out by April. The key seems to be to publish very short books, approximately 100 pages or so. The longer the book, the longer it takes to publish. Even so, 3 books in a year is pretty good and here’s hoping I can add to my BQB Amazon catalog in 2022.

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Dec 24 2021
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top ten lists

Top Ten Reasons Why Die Hard is a Christmas Movie

Welcome to the party, 3.5 pals.

John McClane. You know him. You love him. He’s America’s favorite divorcee turned terrorist fighter. Is his movie a Christmas movie? Yes it is. From BQB HQ in Fabulous East Randomtown, USA here are the top ten reasons why Die Hard is a Christmas movie.

#10 – It’s All About Love

You don’t think so, but it is. John and Holly love each other but are going through a rough patch and trying to work things out. Officer Al loves his wife and his job and is trying to overcome his feelings of inadequacy so he can be the man his family needs him to be. Even Hans Gruber’s #2, Karl, loves his brother so much that he vows vengeance upon McClane when he kills and defiles his brother’s corpse. (Seriously, I get JMC had to defend himself but did he really have to put a Santa hat on Karl’s brother’s dead body?) BTW what is the name of Karl’s brother? I’m too lazy to look it up.

I’ll admit it is a lack of character development in that we don’t learn who Hans loves, or if he is capable of love. Frankly, he is cold and calculating and just loves money. It would have been cool to have gotten some backstory on how he ended up this way. Rather than the two stupid post trilogy sequels, Hollywood might have invested in some Hans prequels telling us how he became a terrorist/robber. Hollywood, feel free to hire me to write this. I’m not doing anything constructive.

#2 – It Takes Place at Christmas

A lot of movies and TV shows reference or take place during Christmas, but Christmas is a big part throughout. I mean, it happens during an office Christmas party, right?

#3 – A Lot of Rooftop Action

Santa and John. Two dudes that like to hang out on your roof. Santa goes up there to deliver presents. John goes up there to transmit radio messages, hide from terrorists, shoot at Al’s car to get his attention and so on.

#4 – Christmas Music

Run DMC’s Christmas in Hollis. Al humming Let It Snow while he buys twinkies. (BTW where does that fat store clerk get off busting on Al for being fat when he, himself, is fat?)

#5 – There’s a Pregnant Lady

You know who was born in a barn? Jesus. You know who was born at the Nakatomi Office Christmas Party? Holly’s secretary’s kid. Oh, wait. He or she wasnt. But the pregnant lady was pretty close such that your first time watching you wonder if amongst all the chaos there’s going to be a baby delivery as well.

#6 – Hopes. Dreams.

Hans and friends hope to be super rich. John hopes to save the day. (Sidenote: should John have just sat back and let the crooks run off with the dough? Answer: no because remember the crooks were going to load everyone on the helicopters and then blow them up as a diversion so the cops think the terrorists croaked and don’t look for them when they run to the Carribbean and earn twenty percent interest off their stolen bearer bonds.) BTW why do so many robber movies involve bearer bonds? Channeling Seinfeld. What’s the deal with all these bearer bonds? Why do I want to buy a bearer bond when anyone can steal it from me and claim to be the bearer of the bond?

#7 – Al Gets His Mojo Back

Funny how times change. Back then, Al shot a kid and was benched because he became psychologically unable to draw his weapon again. This made Al ineffective as a street cop because if he faced a bad guy carrying a bazooka, three chainsaws, a nuclear bomb, 17 handguns and a pile of ginsu knives, Al still wouldn’t draw his gun because of the fear that he might accidentally shoot a kid again.

Times sure have changed. Today, quite understandably there is a lot of heat on cops to make sure their shoots are clean, in light of a lot of high-profile cases where police shootings have been anything but. Back in 1988, we cheer for Al when he finds the courage to draw his gun and gank Karl before he gets the drop on John but ultimately, if the movie were made today, Al probably would have been canned after shooting the kid and would have never even made it to Nakatomi.

#8 – Every Tool is a Johnson

You know the FBI agents who play into Hans’ hands are Johnson and Johnson, the joke being the government has oodles of non-descript, clean-cut schmucks ready to go by the rulebook even when the rules are being thrown out the window….did you know the anchorman Dick Thornburgh fights with is Harvey Johnson? In conclusion, every useful idiot is a Johnson though I’ll admit I have no idea how this connects to Christmas. Maybe because it’s funny and Christmas is a good time for laughter?

#9 – Who Wouldn’t Want a Ride Through LA in Argyle’s Christmas Limo?

I sure would.

#10 – It’s Christmas, Theo. It is the time for miracles.

Hans wants the miracle of independent wealth. John wants the miracle of saving everyone and reuniting with his wife. What miracle do you want? Now is the time to think about it.

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Dec 20 2021
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BQB Watches Seinfeld

BQB Watches Seinfeld – Season 5, Episode 2 – The Puffy Shirt

What’s the deal with puffy shirts, 3.5 readers? Why are they so puffy and why would anyone wear them as a shirt?

Kramer dates “a low talker” i.e. a woman who speaks so quietly that people can barely hear her. At dinner, Jerry politely nodes and says yes, yes to whatever she says, only to find out later that he has agreed to wear a puffy, pirate style shirt on the Today show (the low talker is a fashion designer and apparently, a bad one.)

This is one of the iconic episodes that everyone remembers and it portrays the great lengths we’ll go to in order to not appear rude and/or to fulfill an obligation, even if it is one we signed up for by accident.

Sideplote: George becomes a hand model and like Icarus, walks a bit too close to the sun.

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Dec 19 2021
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BQB Watches Seinfeld

BQB Watches Seinfeld – Season 8 – Episode 13 – The Comeback

Hey 3.5 readers.

Don’t you hate it when you think of the perfect comeback response to some idiot’s rude comment, only you think of it hours, days, weeks, even years later? I’ll tell you, to this day, I’ll have an epiphany of what I should said to some moron…twenty years ago.

Alas, we never think of what we should have said until it’s too late. Even then, our mind is a controlled environment. We think a response might be biting, but in reality, we might flub the execution, or the rude person might even bounce off your comeback with an even better comeback. As the old saying goes, sometimes it is best to let sleeping dogs lie.

Not George. Here, Costanza is feasting on shrimp at a Yankees executive meeting when a nemesis says, “Hey George, the ocean called. They’re running out of shrimp.”

On the car road, the G-Man thinks of…well, what he thinks is a witty retort. “Oh yeah? Well, the jerk store called. They’re running out of you.”

George then makes it his mission in life to deliver this comeback, going so far as to fly to Ohio to bate his nemesis into insulting him again so that he can use his jerk store line. Is it going to go as well as George thinks it will? Watch and find out.

Sideplots: Elaine becomes enamored with a video store clerk’s pick wall. Kramer wants to find someone who will pull his plug when the time comes. Jerry squares off against a tennis pro who isn’t a pro at all.

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Dec 18 2021
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BQB Watches Seinfeld

BQB Watches Seinfeld – The Invitations – Season 7, Episode 22

Seinfeld often poked fun at the futility of life, how we all try so hard only to eventually end up in the pine box sooner or later anyway.

Here, George’s fiance Susan dies. The cause? Toxic glue on cheap wedding invitations. George is to blame because he skimped on the invites, though isn’t the company to blame to? I mean, who sells invites with poisonous glue?

The perverse and creepily understated joke is that Susan’s death is a horrible tragedy, yet George is cool with it. For an entire season, George felt trapped. He didn’t want to marry Susan. He suffered from the delusion that if he just gave it more time, he might do better. (Briefly, he almost does as he meets a friend and mutual acquaintance of actress Marisa Tomei, who as we learn according to the show, has the hots for short, stocky, bald men.)

Susan is beautiful, charming and has a great head on his shoulders. George is a self-admitted loser. Not very bright, ambitious or successful and he knows in his heart he should be happy to have her but can’t help but feel stuck. Her death releases him from an unwanted marriage yet as the show goes on, he never does better. He’s doomed to be alone and unhappy.

There’s a secondary lesson here about how death is awful yet life has a strange way of going on. I’ve experienced it myself. I’ve lost people near and dear to me, losing them was like losing a limb and after the cries and sadness, you still keep living and it’s like, “Um, this is weird that I’m eating this sandwich while my loved one is dead. It’s weird that I’m watching a movie while my loved one is dead. It’s weird that…”

At any rate, George surely should have appreciated Susan more, though humor of the show came from George being an impression of Seinfeld writer Larry David, who has stated publicly often that his brand of comedy comes from the fact that he is aware he is a physically unattractive dum-dum and yet he longs for perfection in everyone else. He knows he can never provide it himself, but he suffers from the delusion that he can do better.

Bottomline – cherish your loved ones. If you meet a special someone, and you two love one another, do your best to make a go of it and stop worrying about what could be if you wait a little longer. Losers give up something good to wait for something that may or may not come. Winners realize they have someone great right in front of them and hold on.

A bird in the hand, 3.5 readers. A bird in the hand.

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Dec 18 2021
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TV

BQB Watches Seinfeld – The Sponge – Season 7, Episode 9

It’s funny how shows that were controversial years ago seem tame by today’s standards. Does that mean it’s good to break taboos or is it bad in that we, as a society, just keep sliding further and further into the abyss?

I don’t know.

At any rate, this episode is all about a contraceptive device called “The Today Sponge.” It’s Elaine’s favorite method for preventing an unwanted pregnancy, but it went off the market. After scouring New York, she finds a pharmacy with one case left and scoops it up.

This leads to her being very discriminating in her choice of men. Apparently before, when sponges were plentiful, she went wild, but today, she really has to be picky. She now interrogates potential boyfriends in the manner of a boss trying to weed out the riff raff in a job interview. A judgmental person might say Elaine should have been this picky all along because let’s face it, sex has consequences and before you invite a person into your bedroom, you might ask yourself is this really the kind of person you want to invite in your life. You never know what might happen that would cause an unwanted individual to stay.

Sideplots: Kramer volunteers to walk in an AIDS walk. He does so diligently, but he doesn’t want to wear the ribbon, which causes turmoil amongst his fellow walkers. The underlying message is that it’s not enough to say you support something, be it a cause or a movement or in this case, finding the cure to a deadly virus. Society literally requires you to wear your support on your sleeve. How sad we don’t trust each other to the point where we demand that people jump through hoops to prove their loyalty.

Meanwhile, George tells Susan a secret about Jerry, bringing up the old conundrum of how, when your BFF finds love, you have to be careful about what you say, because you have to realize if you tell one half of a couple, you are telling both halves.

I recall this episode being somewhat controversial at the time – a woman just flagrantly flouting society’s mores, so concerned about her ability to bang baby free that she hoards contraception and refuses to waste her sponges by banging “not spongeworthy” dudes, which if you take the sponges out of the equation, Elaine should be setting better standards for herself and not banging dudes that she doesn’t see a happy future with anyway. (Men shouldn’t be doing this with men either.) I hate to sound old fashioned, like I’m denouncing people who bang willy nilly, it’s just that I think TV tends to show us the fun side of indiscriminate banging while not showing the negative consequences.

I think my main complaint with the show (everyone’s complaint really) is you do have to suspend disbelief when it comes to the quartet’s dating numbers. They each have a new love interest every week when even the most beautiful and successful among us never rack up those numbers. Meanwhile, few ever rack up those numbers without catching an STD or having an unwanted pregnancy. Few also get out of such a robust dating life without making, well, for lack of a better word, enemies. To the show’s credit, the characters’ lack of concern for the people they are dating often comes back to bite them.

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Dec 15 2021
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Christmas

Mary Did You Know? (Special Mansplaining Edition)

:::sung to the tune of the original Mary Did You Know?:::

Mary did you know, that your baby, would one day walk on water?

You probably didn’t know, until I mansplained it to you, because you’re not a son, you are a daughter.

Women do not understand things, until men tell them how to do it.

So, come along Mary, and I’ll be glad to talk you through it.

Mary, did you know, your baby boy is the Lord of All Creation?

Mary did you know, your baby boy, is the King of All the Nations?

No, you did not know, until a man like me, exercised his powers of persuasion.

So, sit back Mary and be educated by my man-spla-nation.

Mary did you know, your baby boy, absolved mankind of all its sins?

Mary did you know? Of course, you didn’t. I’ve got the Y chromosome so I already win.

Mary did you know? The obvious fact, that you’re pregnant with the Son of God?

OK Mary please, just smile and nod. Placate me so I don’t feel like a fraud.

Mary did you know? Of course, you didn’t. Without men, women don’t know a thing.

So, gather around and together we will sing…Mary did you know?

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Dec 15 2021
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BQB Watches Seinfeld

BQB Watches Seinfeld – The Voice – Season 9 – Episode 2

HELLLLLLLLO! LA LA LA!

BQB here with yet another review of a Seinfeld episode.

I’ve been binge watching the crap out of this and it’s amazing how it transports me back to the 1990s, a happier, simpler time when I was full of hope and being the proprietor of a blog with 3.5 readers wasn’t my greatest achievement.

It’s also funny how I forgot all these pop culturisms and things my friends and I used to say all the time. “HELLLO! LA LA LA!” was a way we’d great each other, thanks to this show.

Anyway, according to Jerry, his latest girlfriend’s belly button looks like a mouth, so much so that he imagines it as the mouth of a jovial, baritoned man, shouting, “HELLLLLO! LA LA LA!” and so forth.

Jerry and friends love the voice so much but like most jokes, it gets tired and overplayed. The J-Man faces a moral conundrum having to choose between a woman and a joke. SPOILER ALERT: He picks the girl, but only because the joke isn’t funny anymore, but alas, when he has to use the voice to save her from the certain doom of Kramer’s oil filled ball drop test (trying to see if rubber can hold oil under high impact to prevent oil tanker crashes), the voice is too played out to make a difference.

Is there a lesson here? Maybe it’s that sometimes, all you need to bring people together is a good joke, but sometimes that same joke can also tear people apart.

In conclusion…HELLO! LA LA LA!

SIDENOTE: It’s funny how Season 9, the last season, has so many iconic, long memorable episodes. So many shows become stupid and forgettable in their final seasons, having burnt out so much steam. Seinfeld really did go out on top, which I suppose is what Jerry always wanted.

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